Delegate Trent Kittleman - District 9A |
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Contents
- A Call to Arms
- Legislative Redistricting: Who's my Delegate now?
- COVID Procedures for the House of Delegates
- Focus on Education: How to Measure Success
Legislative Scholarship Application
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The last two years of COVID have given families much grief. But they have also given parents a first-hand view and new understanding of how their children are being – or not being -- educated in our public school system.
Here are some of the insights that parents have gleaned during the virtual learning year of COVID:
- That the Teachers Unions care about teachers – not kids
- That the public school system is a (95%) monopoly to decide your children will not be allowed to resume in-person learning until the teacher's unions say so
- That wealthier families can make a choice to put their children in a private school when public schools refuse to open.
- That there is no equity for children in lower-income families who may not have access to the Internet or the means to fund an alternative way to educate their kids.
- That the public school system controlled by the Teachers’ Unions have come to believe that parents have no right to say what their children should be taught – or not taught.
- That something called Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) has been infecting schools across the nation.
- That CRT teaches that white students are the oppressors, black students are the victims, and that everything in life is stained by the principle of race.
- And parents in Howard County endured a first-hand example of CRT when the school system attempted to redistrict over 7,000 of our children to other schools based on the theory that lower-income black children can’t learn unless they go to schools with rich white students.
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The question is, what can parents do to regain some measure of control over what is being taught to our kids day after day, year after year.
There is an answer. And the most heartbreaking aspect of the issue is that the antidote to this poison is provable, readily available, and without cost to Maryland taxpayers.
Do you find that hard to believe? Nonetheless, it’s true, and over the course of this legislative session, I’m hoping to give you – parents, grandparents (me!) and taxpayers in general – enough information, including answers to common myths, to make you a believer and to motivate you to act – to tell your legislators what you want them to do!
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The answer is very simple: give parents a choice in how and where to send their kids to school. |
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Let our tax money follow the child, rather than the school. We have many great schools in Maryland. But even those of us who like our schools found out how distressing it was to have no say whatsoever in when or if our child could return to the classroom!
Choice isn’t the enemy of “public schools.” It is the catalyst that creates a real incentive for public schools to improve.
Choice isn’t one-size-fits-all. It includes options such as
- Charter schools
- Education Savings Accounts
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Scholarships such as those offered in our BOOST program or the Hope Scholarship in West Virginia
- Home Schooling
- Learning Pods
- Private schools
- Time-tested, well-respected online schools
Choice is based on the belief that parents love their kids, parents can make the best decisions about their own child’s learning style, and that even if the parents make a wrong choice, Choice lets them take their child out of a failing school and into a better alternative.
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Focus on Schools, "how to measure success," is the first in a series of articles that will appear in this Newsletter, at least one each week. |
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Legislative Redistricting, or
Who's my delegate now?
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Thus starts the 2022 legislative session -- possibly my last, if the legislative redistricting map drawn by the supermajority party becomes law. Their map continues the unfortunate tradition of gerrymandering the districts to maximize the number of Democrats elected and minimize the number of Republicans. If the map is adopted as is, I'm likely to be one of the casualties of redistricting.
For the last eight years, District 9A included the western part of Howard and the southern part of Carroll County. At the time of the last gubernatorial election in 2018, District 9-A had 70,738 registered voters, split between the two counties as follows:
- Howard County had 49,109 voters who comprised 72% of 9A.
- Carroll County had 21,629 voters who comprised 28% of 9A,
The Legislative redistricting map, drawn by Democrat legislators (the "LRAC" map) removed the five Carroll precincts and added seven Montgomery County precincts.
That move captures the essence of gerrymandering. Carroll is notoriously Republican; Montgomery is notoriously Democrat.
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And the result is as expected.
- District 9-A will lose a net total of 6257 Republican voters, and
- District 9-A will gain a net total of 1,442 more Democrats
To see what those numbers might mean in an actual election, we’ve applied the LRAC changes to the 9-A delegate election in 2018. This analysis below is just an example of how switching Montgomery County and Carroll County voters would be likely to affect an election.
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The result? Assuming most voters vote for their party's candidate, Republican #2 would have come in 3rd and lost his seat in the legislature. It doesn't take redistributing very many precincts to change the likely outcome of a race from one party to the other. |
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Below is a copy of the LRAC map. It's difficult to decipher because there are 141 Districts in the State. You can click on the map below to get to a more interactive map and, for the real political junkies, you can access a "Precinct Plan Components Report" for each district. |
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"COVID" procedures for the
House of Delegates . . .
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The Legislature was gaveled into session on Wednesday, January 12th. That, however, was the only day all of the Delegates were able to gather together in the Chamber in person. The business of the House continues under a "proforma" structure for the purpose of getting bills cataloged for First Reader. All sessions can be viewed simultaneously or seen later on YouTube. |
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The public will be allowed in the State House and House and Senate office buildings, and lawmakers will be able to welcome visitors to their offices on a limited basis. But hearings will still be held virtually.
. . . and masks are still required . . .
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For a more complete discussion of how the House will function during the 2022 session, click here.
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Focus on Education
How do you measure success?
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What about "Ratings"?
Newsweek: For years, Newsweek ranked Maryland schools among the best in the nation. Three years ago, the Kirwan Commission learned the truth: Maryland schools are not among the top schools. We are firmly in the middle of the pack. Ratings all depend on the criteria used for ranking.
The “Challenge Index,” which was begun in 1998, is the oldest high school ranking system in the country. Here is how the Challenge Index creates its rankings. The Challenge Index “is the only list that does not rely on test scores, which are more a measure of student family income than school quality. It is also the only list that compares private and public schools. It ranks high schools by a simple ratio: the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, or Cambridge tests given at a school each year, divided by the number of seniors who graduated that year.
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Why base its rankings on the percent of students taking one or more of those tests? “Participation in college-level AP, IB, and Cambridge tests is a unique measure of the depth of learning. Teachers cannot dumb down the exams because they are written and graded by independent experts. Success on the exams has been linked with success in college. The list is designed to recognize schools that challenge average students, so magnet or charter schools that have few or no average students are placed on a separate Public Elites list on this website.”
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The Challenge Index also provides two more categories of information:
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“E&E%” is the percentage of all seniors who passed at least one AP, IB, or Cambridge test SOME TIME IN HIGH SCHOOL.
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“Lunch%” gives the percentage of all students whose family incomes are low enough to qualify for lunch subsidies.
One more important piece of information given is the type of school. A “C” after the name of the school means it is a public charter school. A “P” means it is a private school. All others are publicly-run public schools.
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So what? I t's obvious that nationwide rankings are not going to help parents decide if their child is going to a "good" school. What it DOES tell us is the value of CHOICE. Fourteen of the top 20 schools are public charter schools! And the pattern continues on down the list. (To see the whole list of 300 schools, click here or on the table above.)
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Charter Schools are just one of the CHOICE alternatives, but the number of such schools has been spreading throughout the country, and there is a significant body of data, comparing their effectiveness with that of public schools.
Next week: A deeper look at Charter Schools.
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On a more positive 'note'
. . . before COVID-19 . . .
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The young women of the Institute of Notre Dame dazzled the Women's Caucus with their rendition of "What Happens When a Woman Takes Power?" Enjoy! |
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Kittleman Legislative Scholarship |
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High school seniors, current undergraduate students at a 4-year college, a community college, or a private career school are eligible to apply for a Legislative Scholarship.
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Please MAIL your applications to Trent.Kittleman@House.State.MD.US
For questions regarding the application process, call my Annapolis office and speak with Chelsea Leigh Murphy, my Chief of Statt, at 410-841-3556.
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Authorized, Friends of Trent Kittleman, William Oliver, Treasurer |
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